Gas Lamps, by MAURICE ROLLINAT
Gas-lamps on streets of ill repute
Illuminate for ragged rogues
And those, full of soliloquies,
Who sail with three sheets to the wind.
Accomplices of prowlers sly
Who stalk the dude with silver fob,
Gas-lamps on streets of ill repute
Illuminate for ragged rogues.
And knifings, beatings, fisticuffs.
Shrill whistles, muffled cries and shouts,
Stool pigeons, peeping toms--all these
Mysterious rites are witnessed by
Gas-lamps on streets of ill repute.
From “Gallic Echoes: A Selection of Poems” (Asylum Arts bilingual edition: $16.95 cloth; $8.95 paper; 137 pp.), translated from the French by Kendall Lappin. 1991 by Kendall Lappin. Reprinted with permission.
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